The History of the English Church and People (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Book

This is a hard book to review, because whether it deserves five stars or 2-3 stars is going to depend pretty heavily on why you're reading it.

If you're reading it for academic purposes, it's really wonderful - it's one of the very, very few sources that we have for early English history and it's a goldmine of intriguing information on topics from the early Saxon kingdoms, the native Picts and Britons, or the procession of English conversion to Christianity.

If you're reading it just for pleasure, it's a bit more of a mixed bag. Bede is a pleasant writer, and every once and a while he'll tell a great anecdote or included a beautifully-written passage. There's one part in the second book that's a great extended simile on a sparrow flying through a feasting hall, and it's the best of both worlds - it's a lovely passage in its own right, and it gives a great recreation for historians of what a feast hall may have been like. But it's also a rather long history, and there are certainly sections that are going to be boring for those who aren't a specialist in Christian conversion, Anglo Saxon kingship, or the Paschal Controversy.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend it to those with a particular interest in early English history. If you're a bit more mixed on that, reading some selections might be a better bet.